You Want the Wrong Things

Time to catch up. Stuff happens all the time, but I don’t always feel I should write about it. Sometimes I feel like I would be taking a half-baked cake out of the oven.

More and more, I am realizing that the only truly valuable work God does is inside us. Charismatics see a fair number of miracles, including healing, and we tend to focus on things God does in the natural world. We are caught up in a web of lies from people like Kenneth Copeland and Steve Munsey; preachers with no vision try to convince us that we should pursue God in order to get rich and receive other relatively trivial blessings. We put the cart before the horse, so we don’t make much progress at anything God actually cares about.

When Satan wants to get at us, the primary thing he does is to lie. Sure, he causes illnesses and other problems, but those things happen because we believe his lies.

If we had not believed lies, the planet would not be cursed, and we would not be dealing with poverty and sickness and so on. A few lies destroyed the world. And since then, the lies have increased, inside every one of us. All of us are corrupted by faith in lies.

The Bible tells us Satan is the accuser. He stands in front of God accusing us of things–most of them true–and he gets power to harm us. But the Bible doesn’t talk much about the other side of the coin. Satan accuses God before us, constantly, and we believe it. Then we go on to accuse him, ourselves.

There is always symmetry in the supernatural. The spiritual realm is full of two-edged swords. Satan apes God. Sorcerers imitate apostles and prophets. Charismatics get filled with the Spirit of God; occult practitioners offer themselves as vessels for evil spirits. God cursed man when Adam fell, and man also cursed God.

Think about this: God has been cursed with the same problems he gave us when we left Eden.

God said Adam would work hard for what he got, and that the earth would bring forth weeds and thorns. Doesn’t God work hard to save us? Think of the crucifixion and the constant flow of martyrs. And look at what Isaiah calls the rebellious: “And the light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame: and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his briers in one day.”

God said Eve would suffer in childbirth. As a result, human beings have gigantic heads when they’re born, and this makes labor very painful. Doesn’t God suffer in raising up children? Again, look at the crucifixion. And what prevents us from submitting and becoming God’s children? Our big heads. We value our silly thoughts above his.

God said wives would strive to rule their husbands. Don’t we strive to rule God? Isn’t that exactly what the prosperity preachers do? They want God to be their little genie, providing money on demand, so they can spend it on mansions and–let’s face it–whores.

God drove Adam and Eve out of a place of peace and success. Don’t we drive God out of our hearts and keep his peace and success out? Isn’t Eden a type of the healthy, blessed human mind?

God even put an armed cherub at the gate of Eden, to keep Adam and Eve out. Well, Satan is a cherub. He stands before our own gates, keeping the Spirit of God out.

So anyway, lies are our biggest problem.

Satan tells us God doesn’t love us. He says God can’t use us because we’ve sinned too much. He says God is dead. He says God is weak. He says God has decided not to help us. He says God gives us diseases to teach us things, and that we are not supposed to be healed. He says we’re supposed to be poor. He says we will always lose when we come up against his children.

We believe this stuff. That’s the problem. It’s slander, and we accept it, and then we repeat it in our hearts, and we become slanderers of God.

This is important. People think that what they do is what matters, but that’s completely wrong. What you do is important, but what you believe and feel is the root of your blessings and curses. The Bible clearly states that God looks on the heart, not the appearance, and that faith is accounted unto us as righteousness. It says the righteous shall live by faith, and that without faith it is impossible to please God.

The ancient Jews were satisfied with men who obeyed the rules, but Jesus came along and said that wasn’t good enough. The evil we kept to ourselves, without acting on it, was also unacceptable. Our desires are a problem. This is even true of desires we hate and ignore.

If you believe a lie about God, your heart and mind are not right, and your situation on earth will reflect that.

Charismatic deceivers lie by omission, failing to teach that prayer in tongues is essential. They don’t listen to God, so they don’t teach what he wants taught. They tell us prayer in tongues is “evidence,” as though that were its only significance. They don’t encourage people to pray in tongues daily. They have no understanding of the benefits, and they don’t care. They just want money, fame, and easy living.

Because we don’t pray in tongues, we have no faith, and faith is the money of heaven. We are literally poor in spirit. When we pray, nothing happens, and then we go to church and shout in fake joy when the preachers mention God’s promises, hoping they will eventually start to work.

Because we don’t pray in tongues, we have no revelation and no discernment. We don’t see our own faults. We don’t see God’s priorities. When a fool like “Rabbi” Ralph Messer shows up and wraps Eddie Long in a sacred scroll and tells everyone Long is a king, a big percentage of us buy it, because we haven’t had our eyes opened. Christians are THE biggest suckers on earth, but we are supposed to be the hardest people to fool.

No one who doesn’t pray in tongues should be preaching. It’s an invitation to disaster. It happens, because very few people who pray in tongues are available. God uses what he has on hand. But it’s not right. The blind are leading the blind, and Satan rules the vast majority of churches, charismatic, Catholic, Baptist, or what have you.

We don’t pray in tongues, so our hearts and minds remain unchanged, and we become what Jesus called “whitewashed tombs,” full of dead men’s bones. Bones represent the spirit. Demons are the spirits of men; they were the offspring of angels and women. The dead men’s bones that fill us are the demons of iniquity, and because we don’t pray in tongues, we welcome and feed them. Often we think they’re the Holy Spirit. And they don’t depart instantly when you receive the baptism with the Spirit. They stay until you turn on them and use God’s power and authority to drive them out.

Jesus said these things using metaphors, possibly because he knew men would destroy every copy of the gospels if he spoke plainly.

You have demons. You may not want to hear it, but it’s true. They work constantly to delay the end of the world and put off judgment. They are not looking forward to the lake of fire. They surround you and babble at you all day, and if you’re not praying in tongues, you don’t have God’s voice to balance them.

Think of the foolish concept of “quality time.” It was invented to excuse parents who didn’t want to spend ACTUAL time with their kids. The claim is that if you spend one really good half-hour with your son every day, he’ll be fine. Of course, that’s a lie. Every second that your kids are away from good influences, they’re surrounded by bad ones, and those influences produce a harvest. Similarly, you can’t get God’s wisdom and correction praying with your understanding for fifteen minutes a day. You need to put in long periods praying in the spirit, and your spirit will learn from your mind.

If you sow little, you reap little.

Hell is at the center of the earth, and it’s there for a reason. The kingdom of hell is at the center of a man. The more you turn inward and try to satisfy yourself, the more you increase the power of the kingdom of hell. What you need to do is to go in with a wire brush and clean everything out. God is above the earth, far from the center, and you will find his kingdom by valuing things that are outside of, and above, yourself.

One of the worst forms of slander is flattery, and self-flattery is probably the lowest type. Slander doesn’t have to be uncomplimentary. It just has to be false. Flattery is sweet, so we swallow it eagerly. And often it manifests in excuses.

If you’re not honest about yourself, you will turn God’s help away. Excuses are a wall of protection for pride. They preserve it. If you don’t admit fault, God takes it as a request to stop helping you. The Bible clearly states that he will actually fight you if you’re proud. Think about that! God fights Christians!

Why don’t preachers talk about this? They constantly come up with excuses for us and for God, explaining why we don’t see more miracles and more help. Why don’t they look at the Bible itself and find the most obvious explanation? If you have faith, and you still have problems, something else must be in the way. The Bible says God fights the proud and helps the humble. Could anything be more clear?

You’re not a victim. I don’t care what people or spirits have done to you. None of that could hurt you if your heart and mind were right. You have desires and drives that aren’t right, and when you obey them, you come up with excuses. You may even blame your culture. “I’m Latin.” “I’m Italian.” “I’m from Appalachia.” “I’m black.” As soon as that excuse rolls off your tongue, God sits back and folds his hands.

God’s primary goal is to transform you into his child, with his inner nature. That is JOB ONE. It’s not to give you money, find you a wife, heal your diseases, or fight your enemies. When you don’t confess and listen to correction, you are opposing the primary work he hoped to accomplish when he allowed himself to be tortured to death.

I got a bunch of revelation about this this morning, and it was very unpleasant. But I can’t go backward. The devil isn’t waiting to welcome me home with a big hug and an easy life. The Red Sea is behind me, so I have to get with the program, and so do you.

Quit obsessing on healing and money. Look inside yourself. Start cleaning things up, and do it with God’s power, not your own.

That’s all I feel like writing right now.